


Requiem

by Resistance



Category: Country Music RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resistance/pseuds/Resistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone asked me to write Brantley as a vampire. This worked pretty well for me, actually. There will be more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightwalk7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwalk7/gifts).



They say I should have died in that car accident. They’re right. I should have died. In fact, I did die. For about thirteen minutes. It’s a long story, sit back and get comfortable. Don’t interrupt, I’ve gotta tell the whole thing right through without pausing or I’ll never get through it. You’ll have a million questions, but save ‘em, I bet I’ll get to them eventually. Hold on, it’s a bumpy ride.

I was nineteen and reckless. Completely reckless. I partied day and night, it was what I lived to do. I drank more than you can imagine, anything you could imagine. I did drugs but I never liked them. I had sex with anyone that was willing. I didn’t care what was going to become of me, like my mother warned. I didn’t care what my piercings or tattoos would look like when I got old because I never planned to get old. Live fast and leave a good looking corpse. That was me.

One night, I was partying at someone’s house that I didn’t know with people that I didn’t know. I was handed cups of something and told to drink it, which I did. I don’t know what it was and I didn’t care. It got me drunk fast. I danced with anyone that wanted to. There was a guy that kept close to me most of the night. I noticed him, he was the kind of beautiful that didn’t seem real. Not my type at all. But he had a great body, which was all my type really consisted of when I was that drunk. He touched me a lot, which wasn’t typical at parties like this. He told me I was gonna take him home and I was in no position to disagree, not that I wanted to.

I was stupid enough to decide that I could drive. I always thought I could drive, no matter how drunk I was. Usually I made it home safe. I had a few DUIs, but they didn’t matter to me. I had never crashed. Yet. Of course that night would be the time that I did. I wonder now what would have happened to me if I hadn’t. I wouldn’t have remembered him, I found that out later, wouldn’t have remembered what he did to me. I know now he has that ability because I have it too and it has nothing to do with the amount of alcohol I drank that night.

I don’t remember a lot about the crash. I was driving down the highway, he was in the passenger’s seat. The radio was cranked loud and I think I was singing, but I don’t remember what the song was. Maybe I just assume the radio was on because I never shut it off. He liked to drive in silence, we might have been doing that this night. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know what made me swerve, I don’t know if I hit a pothole or an animal or nothing at all. My truck flipped over and landed upside down in the brush. I was thrown clear through the back windshield and landed in the field. The cop that said he was behind me, said he saw me land on my feet, but I doubt that was true. He came on the scene much later, but I think he wanted people to think he was a quick responder.

I remember being conscious the whole time. I never passed out. I remember getting up and trying to move my truck, because I knew that he was still inside and I had to save him. When I tell the story later, I say I was alone. It’s easier to explain. The cop said he saw me trying to flip my truck. That makes me wonder if he drove by then came back, because he wasn’t there for anything that happened next. I couldn’t flip my truck over, so I crouched down to see if he was even alive. He was sitting on the roof, completely unharmed. My brain couldn’t process that. Blood dripped from a cut on my head and I started to feel dizzy, the adrenaline was fading. The pain came next.

Every part of my body was on fire. I couldn’t tell what was wrong because everything was wrong. My back and my legs and my arms and my shoulder all hurt. My stomach ached in a way I had never experienced before and would never again. My head was pounding and everything started to swim. I laid down in the grass and closed my eyes. I was dying. I hadn’t died on impact, I’d moved around even, but I was going to die now. I sighed. I wasn’t mad, my brain couldn’t process emotions like that. I wasn’t even disappointed. It was simply a fact. This was it. I tried to remember the party, it was going to be my last, and I remember wishing it had been more fun that it was.

He was crouching beside me before I’d even realized he’d moved. I tried to tell myself I had closed my eyes, but I knew I hadn’t. He moved fast. His adrenaline must have been through the roof. He was smiling. He said something, but I couldn’t understand him. The words sounded like the waves beating on the shore. Somewhere in my woozy mind, I wondered if we were near water, but the thought passed quickly. He had leaned in closer, he was whispering in my ear, but I couldn’t understand. I tried to tell him that, but I couldn’t speak. I think I groaned, maybe that was in my head. It didn’t matter. He stopped talking and just looked at me. I was looking at him, his mouth wasn’t moving, that’s how I knew he stopped talking. Except he didn’t stop talking.

“You’ll be fine.” He said. Well, I heard him say it without him actually saying it. My head was swimming so much I couldn’t possibly try to figure out how he had done that or why. I also knew it was a lie. I wasn’t gonna be fine. I was gonna die. I wanted to tell him that, but I hadn’t figured out how to speak again. But he shook his head, “Trust me, Brantley.” Fuck. I hadn’t given him my name. I never do. I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk. How did he know my name? Why was I bothering with this as I was about to die? Why was it taking so long? My eyes were transfixed on his, though I reasoned somehow that was only because it took too much energy to look anywhere else. And besides that, there was nothing to look at. We were in the brush on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. This was not how I wanted to go.

“You need to trust me. It’s all going to be okay.” He was doing that talking without talking thing again and I think I was starting to get used to it, or else my internal injuries and blood loss were making me apathetic. It wouldn’t take too much. He leaned closer to me as if he was going to kiss me. I tried to tell him not to. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been planning to fuck the guy, but I wasn’t a kisser. That was too personal. It didn’t matter, though, he didn’t want to kiss me anyway. Well, not my lips. I was completely motionless to stop him, but at the same time, I didn’t want to stop him. I would learn later that was something he was doing to me, because I have the ability to do the same thing. He was compelling me even if he didn’t have to, because it was a natural part of the feeding. And that’s what he was about to do. Feed on me.

In the moment before his teeth sank into the side of my neck, I was completely positive that vampires existed only in crappy moves and overactive imaginations. In the moment after his teeth sank into the side of my neck, I couldn’t think of anything but the sensation that he was causing. You might think that it would cause pain, but it was as far from that as humanly possible. Or as inhumanly possible. All of my pain was gone. I was floating somewhere above my body. I was everywhere at once. Mind altering substances never did this to my consciousness. The ecstasy was incredible. It was something as far beyond incredible as words would go. Sex would never hold a candle to that feeling. Drugs would never touch it. Even in the middle of that feeling, I knew I would never feel as good as that again.

Then I blacked out.

The next solid memory I have is of the cop offering to call an ambulance for me. I looked around for the guy, but he was gone, or else I couldn’t see him from where I was. Memories started filtering back in slowly. The party, the crash, all that pain. The man that had been with me. He talked without talking. He bit me. My hand went up to my neck, but there were no marks. I heard the cop telling me not to move, but I ignored him. Nothing hurt. As a matter of fact, I could feel some of the lasting effects of whatever he’d done to me in that bite. I knew I liked to get bit, but it was never anything like that. But that thought was just a joke in my own mind. What he had done wasn’t foreplay. What he had done was something else entirely. But he had done something to me. I could feel it. I could feel everything.

I could hear the heartbeat of the cop crouching beside me. No, it wasn’t his heartbeat, it was the blood pulsing. I was aware of the flow of blood through his veins. It damn near sounded musical to me. I could smell his sweat, his cologne, his shampoo and the steak sub he’d eaten for dinner. It had peppers and mushrooms, but no onions. He’d been drinking coffee after that. He’d recently shined his shoes and the socks he was wearing were a few days old. There were other smells I couldn’t place and trying to was making my head hurt. I didn’t understand how I could tell so many things with my eyes closed, but I could and I knew I was right. Which meant something was very wrong.  

I thought I would panic then, but I wasn’t. Though it was in the process of telling myself to calm my breathing that I noticed I wasn’t breathing. I could take in a breath, I could let it out, but when I stopped actively thinking about doing that, I found that I didn’t have to. My heart wasn’t beating either. There was blood in my body, but it wasn’t moving the way I could sense the movement of the blood in the cop’s body. Now I was starting to panic.

“Don’t open your eyes.” That wasn’t the cop’s voice. I instantly knew I had to obey it. It took me a minute or two after I had already made sure my eyes stayed closed that I recognized the voice as being the man that bit me. I wished I knew his name because that way of identifying him was going to get old really fast. “George.” I heard him say. No wonder he didn’t give his name, it sucked. I wondered if he had a middle name he could use instead. I heard the feeling of annoyance in my head. I know that makes no sense whatsoever, but it happened all the same. “Henry.” He said. That’s better, I thought. I was getting used to the fact that he could hear my thoughts. In all that I had to get used to, that wasn’t the most difficult. I’ll call you Hank, I thought. He didn’t like it, but he agreed. I smiled and it felt weird.

Time slowed to almost a stop and Hank explained things to me. I had died in the wreck. Or I would have, if he hadn’t killed me. The abject pleasure that he had caused was actually my death. That messed with my head too much for me to think about it. He told me I had been dead for thirteen minutes before he had sliced his own wrist and fed me. That’s how he phrased it. He fed me his blood, which I evidently liked enough to drink myself back to life, as it was. Which wasn’t exactly life. I was still dead, or better phrased, I was undead. He told me he hadn’t planned to turn me, he’d planned to drink from me and let me go. Things didn’t work out that way.

He told me he’d fix the accident for me, so the cop would think I’d gone to the hospital but the ambulance wouldn’t come. I couldn’t be checked by a doctor, I would never be allowed to go to a doctor again. What I was would have to be my secret for the rest of my life. And Hank told me that would not be forever, I would die. As he was turning me, he asked if I would rather walk in the sun or live forever. I’m not sure if that moment was the best time for me to carefully weigh my options, but I chose the sun. He told me I’d live a longer life than mortals, but I would someday die. I was grateful for that. I have never wanted to live forever.        

Hank told me he would teach me everything I needed to know, but after that, I wouldn’t see much of him. I felt my stomach knot and my chest tighten at that. I didn’t understand why, I had no real attachment to him except that he knew everything I needed to know before he left. He promised he would not leave until I knew everything I needed and I trusted him. I didn’t know why, but I did. That relaxed me to some degree. He told me, finally, I could open my eyes. I expected to see black sky and trees over me. Instead I saw white ceiling and a lazily spinning fan. It was going so slowly, I could see each of the blades as it spun. I wondered why someone would have such a pointless fan on their ceiling. I would come to learn that the fan was spinning at a normal speed, it was my eyes that were different then.  Everything was different. And the more I learned, the more I was okay with it all. Nothing was ever going to be the same for me, but things weren’t all that great to begin with, so different didn’t sound like such a bad thing. Might even be fun.

Little did I know how stupid a thought that was.


End file.
